Thursday 8 October 2009

You Not Looking At Me?

There are some films that you are destined never to watch. Without trying, i have managed to never see Casablanca, Citizen Kane or Schindler's list. It was only a couple of years ago that i sat through the Sound of Music in its entirety. I made it 40 years before clapping eyes on 2001: A Space Odyssey.
All these films are regarded as classics and i should probably feel ashamed that i have never made time for Lawrence of Arabia but found it for Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.
An Orange survey has revealed that The Godfather tops a poll of films that most people claim to have watched, but never have. It is followed by Dirty Dancing, The Shawshank Redemption, Taxi Driver, Gone With the Wind and It's a Wonderful Life.
Of these six, i will admit to not having seen Dirty Dancing and having watched It's Wonderful Life more times than is probably healthy. As for the rest i would say that those who haven't seen them are not missing anything in particular except the scene in Taxi Driver where the Robert De Nero character does the 'you talking to me?' scene which everyone has said to someone in the Travis Bickle style at some point in their lives even if they didn't know where it came from.
My general rule of thumb is that if the film includes the word 'Star' in the title, it can quite safely be left alone. Same goes for if the cast list includes the name John Claude Van Damme.

2 comments:

Cheezy said...

Of all the flicks you mention here, Dirty Dancing is the only one I haven't seen. And no amount of sadness about the untimely & premature demise of Patrick Swayze is likely to change this...

Taxi Driver is a longstanding member of 'Cheezy's All Time Top Ten Movies'... Might be a guy thing.

Falling on a bruise said...

I thought Taxi Driver was a decent enough film, De Nero was great as usual, but it certainly appeals more to men.